Adelaide Road towards the bus stop in the windy twilight-it must have been more than an hour she had spent with him, if it was this late-of having been set apart somehow from everything around her. She felt like the people in the advertisement for Horlicks, or maybe it was Bovril, who are shown walking along through driving winter rain but smiling cheerfully, each one enclosed in a protective aura of light and warmth.
She went over in her mind what she could recall of the tales and parables he had recounted. The story that had made the strongest impression on her was that of the girl who had been brought back from the dead. This girl had three suitors and could not choose between them. Then one day she fell ill and was dead within the hour. The suitors were heartbroken, and each mourned in his own way. The first would not leave the graveyard, day or night, and ate and slept beside the grave; the second went wandering and became a fakir, or wise man; while the third gave over all of his time to comforting the girl's grieving father. One day on his travels the second suitor, the fakir, learned from another wise man the secret magic charm that would bring the dead back to life. He hurried home and went to the cemetery and said the magic formula to summon the girl out of her grave, and in a moment she appeared, as beautiful as she had ever been. The girl returned to her father's house, and the suitors began to argue among themselves as to who should have her hand. Eventually they went to the girl and each put his case to her. The first said he had not left the graveside for an instant; therefore his grieving had been of the purest. The second, the fakir, pointed out that it was he who had acquired the knowledge to bring her back from the land of the dead. The third spoke of the consolation and comfort he had brought to her father after she had died. The girl listened to each in turn, and then said to them, 'You who discovered the spell to restore my life, you were a humanitarian. You who took care of my father and comforted him, you acted like a son. But you who lay in grief beside my grave, you were a true lover-and you I will marry.'
It was, she knew, only a story, and even a silly story, at that, yet something in it moved her. She felt that of all that the Doctor had said, this was the one thing meant especially for her. The shape of the fable seemed the shape of a life that would one day be hers. The future, she believed, the future in the unlikely form of Dr. Kreutz, had sent her a message, a prophecy, of survival and of love.
7
QUIRKE WAS NOT SURPRISED WHEN HE HEARD WHO IT WAS THAT WAS asking to see him. Since the day of the inquest he had been expecting a visit from the inspector. He put down the phone and lit a cigarette and sat thinking-let Hackett cool his heels for five minutes; it would do him good. It was morning, and Quirke was in his office at the hospital. Through the glass panel in the door he could see into the unnatural glare of the dissecting room, where his assistant, Sinclair, dourly handsome with black curls and a thin, down-turned mouth, was at work on the corpse of a little boy who had been run over by a coal lorry in the Coombe that morning. Thinking of the policeman, Quirke experienced a twinge of unease. The years at Carricklea had left him with a lurking fear of all appointed figures of authority that no subsequent accumulation of authority of his own could rid him of.
He crushed out the cigarette and took off his green surgical gown and went out of the office. He paused a moment to watch Sinclair cut into the child's exposed rib cage with the bone cutter that always made Quirke think, incongruously, of silver secateurs. Sinclair was deft and quick; someday, when Quirke was gone, this young man would be in charge of the Department. The thought had not occurred to Quirke before. Where, exactly, would he be gone to when that day came?
Inspector Hackett was standing by the reception desk with his hat in his hands. He was in his accustomed outfit of shiny suit and slightly soiled white shirt and nondescript tie; the knot of the tie, sealed tight and also shiny, looked as if it had not been undone in a long time, only pulled loose at nighttime and tightened again in the morning. Quirke pictured the detective at end of day sitting wearily on the side of a big bed in angled lamplight, his shoes off and his hair on end, absently widening the loop of the tie with both hands and lifting it over his head, like a would-be suicide having second thoughts.
'I hope I'm not taking you away from your important work,' Hackett said in his flat, Midlands accent, smiling. He had a way of making even the most bland of pleasantries sound laden with skepticism and sly amusement.
'My work can always wait,' Quirke answered.
The inspector chuckled. 'I suppose so-your clients are not going anywhere.'
They left the hospital and walked out into the morning's smoky sunlight. Hackett ran a hand over his oiled, blue-black hair and set his hat in place, giving the brim an expert downwards brush with an index finger. They turned in the direction of the river, which announced itself with its usual greenish stench. An urchin in rags scampered by, almost colliding with them, and Quirke thought again of the child's corpse on the slab, the pinched, bloodless face and the rickety legs stretched out.
'That was a decent thing to do,' the inspector said, 'sparing the feelings of the relatives of that young woman-what was her name?'
'Hunt,' Quirke said. 'Deirdre Hunt.'
'That's right-Hunt.' As if he would have forgotten. He pulled at an earlobe with a finger and thumb, screwing his face into a thoughtful grimace. 'Why, do you think, would she do a thing like that, fine young woman as she was?'
'A thing like what?'
'Why, do away with herself.'
They came to the river and crossed to the embankment and strolled in the direction of the park. The smoke of the streets did not reach over the water and the high air there shone bluely. An unladen post office delivery wagon thundered past, the big Clydesdale high-stepping haughtily, its mane flying, its huge, fringed hoofs ringing on the roadway as if they were made of heavy, hollow steel.
'The coroner's verdict,' Quirke said measuredly, 'was accidental drowning.'
'Oh, I know, I know-I know what the verdict was. Wasn't I there to hear it?' He chuckled again. ''A verdict in accordance with the evidence,' isn't that what the papers say?'
'Do you doubt it?'
'Well now, Mr. Quirke, I do. I mean to say, it's hard to think that a young woman would drive out to Sandycove at dead of night and take off every stitch of her clothes and leave them folded on the ground and then let herself fall by accident into the sea.'
'A midnight swim,' Quirke said. 'It's summer. It was a warm night.'
'The only ones that swim out there are men, at the Forty Foot-no women allowed.'
'Maybe she did it for a lark. It was nighttime, there would be no one to see. Women do that kind of thing, when the moon is full.'
'Oh, aye,' the policeman said, 'a midnight lark.'
'People are odd, Inspector. They get up to the oddest things-no doubt you've noticed that in your line of work.'
Hackett nodded and closed his eyes briefly, acknowledging the irony.
They came level with Ryan's pub on Parkgate Street. The policeman gestured towards it. 'You must miss the company,' he said, 'of an evening.'
Quirke chose not to understand. 'The company?'
'Being a strict teetotaler now, as you tell me. What do you do with yourself after dark?'
It was Phoebe's question again. He had no answer. Instead he asked, in a tone almost of impatience: 'Are you investigating Deirdre Hunt's death?'
The inspector stopped short with exaggerated surprise. 'Investigating?
